Comparative Analysis of IT Monitoring Tools

Comparative Analysis of
IT Monitoring Tools
Review of IT monitoring platforms from CA
Technologies, SolarWinds, IBM, and Nagios
The following analysis compares strengths and weaknesses
of CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.1 and the new CA Nimsoft
Monitor version 7.5 to trial IT monitoring tools versions from
IBM, SolarWinds, and Nagios.
Apprize360 Intelligence, INC.
June 26, 2014
A Special Report Commissioned for CA Technologies, Inc.

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Table of Contents
Overview and Summary.....................................................................................................................3
Study Methodology ...........................................................................................................................3
Enhancements from Nimsoft Monitor Version 7.1 to 7.5.....................................................................4
CA Nimsoft Monitor V7.5 Configuration and Installation Process.........................................................5
Comparative Benchmark Results ........................................................................................................6
CA Nimsoft Monitor vs. SolarWinds ..........................................................................................................................7
CA Nimsoft Monitor vs. Nagios XI .............................................................................................................................7
CA Nimsoft Monitor vs. IBM SmartCloud Monitoring ...............................................................................................8
Remote Monitoring Considerations for Distributed Environments.......................................................9
Assessment of Specific Testing Scenarios..........................................................................................11
Monitoring Configuration........................................................................................................................................12
Out-of-the-box Unified Dashboards ........................................................................................................................13
SLA Reporting ..........................................................................................................................................................15
Ease of Use for Alarms, Dashboards, & Reporting ..................................................................................................16
Summary and Conclusions................................................................................................................18
Figure 4: Total Time-to-Monitor..............................................................................................................................18
Table 4: Comparative Summary - Total Time-to-Monitor .......................................................................................19
Appendix A: Tables ..........................................................................................................................20
Table 5: CA vs. SolarWinds ......................................................................................................................................20
Table 6: CA vs. IBM & Nagios ..................................................................................................................................22
Table 7: Response to Testing Scenarios...................................................................................................................24
Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Apprize360, LLC disclaims all warranties
as to the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of such information and shall have no liability for errors, omissions, or inadequacies in such
information. This publication consists of the opinions of Apprize360’s research organization and should not be construed as presenting
statements of fact. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

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Overview and Summary
CA Nimsoft Monitor is a unified IT monitoring and
management solution that offers deep monitoring
functionality within a single, unified architecture. CA
Technologies recently launched Nimsoft Monitor
version 7.5, bringing new functionality to the platform,
as well as improvements in overall usability, navigation,
and reporting.
Multiple IT monitoring platforms are available on the
market today, supporting the various needs of small,
medium-sized, and large enterprises, as well as
managed service providers (MSPs). To better
understand how CA Nimsoft Monitor compares to other
IT monitoring platforms in terms of functionality,
operations, and usability, Apprize360 Intelligence
studied and compared eight different IT monitoring
products including:
1. CA Nimsoft Monitor Version 7.1
2. CA Nimsoft Monitor Version 7.5
3. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
(NPM)
4. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor
(SAM)
5. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager
6. SolarWinds Storage Manager
7. Nagios XI
8. IBM SmartCloud Monitoring
Study Methodology
Apprize360 downloaded fully functional trial versions of each of the eight IT monitoring products
included in this study, so as to understand the deployment and operational experience that a
typical customer would encounter with each platform. The comparative analysis was performed
using a Dell PowerEdge T620 Server with 768GB of memory across 24 DIMM slots and 64TB of
disk space. For CA Nimsoft Monitor, IBM SmartCloud Monitoring, and the four SolarWinds
products, the operating system used was Microsoft Server 2012. For Nagios XI, the same server
Key Study Findings
 CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5 is a
single, unified solution, and not several
point products integrated together with
a common GUI. This significantly reduces
the time IT staff spends in trouble-
shooting issues, generating day-to-day
reports and managing their monitoring
tools.
 CA Nimsoft Monitor 7.5 was the easiest
platform to download and begin using;
embedded interactive guides allowed for
faster implementation due to reduced
initial configuration errors.
 CA Nimsoft had the “fastest time to
monitor” (time from download to active
device monitoring) among the products
studied, providing a more rapid time to
value.
 CA Nimsoft Monitor supports remote
monitoring needs without requiring a
dedicated VPN connection to remote
sites.

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was used, but it was partitioned to run Linux Red Hat Enterprise. In all cases, configuration and
discovery was completed on a network with 100 end devices. Downloads of the trial versions of
the platforms were carried out using a T1 connection that averaged 20-30MBPS Internet speeds.
Enhancements from Nimsoft Monitor Version 7.1 to 7.5
CA Technologies launched its latest version of Nimsoft Monitor on April 2, 2014 called CA Nimsoft
Monitor Version 7.5. Significant improvements were made from CA Nimsoft Monitor Version 7.1
to 7.5, primarily in the following five areas:
1. Faster and easier platform deployment
2. New and improved maintenance mode
3. HTML5 access and improved custom dashboards
4. Improved dynamic thresholds
5. Enhanced discovery capabilities
Faster and Easier Platform Deployment
CA Technologies has invested significantly in the deployment experience of CA Nimsoft Monitor
version 7.5. The platform uses a self-extraction application from Flexera Software’s
InstallAnywhere, making the guided downloaded experience of version 7.5 easy and quick. CA
has included helpful on-screen tips and installation guide points, which allow IT administrators
to prepare for future configuration and installation steps with CA Nimsoft Monitor.
New and Improved Maintenance Mode
CA Technologies has significantly enhanced CA Nimsoft Monitor’s maintenance mode capabilities
in version 7.5. The maintenance mode probe allows users to bring systems in and out of
maintenance mode with a push of a button. When systems are in maintenance mode, alarms for
version 7.5 are suppressed, so that network changes can be made without alarm generation. New
functionality also supports alarm suppression during regular or scheduled network maintenance,
in order to avoid false alarms and alerts.
HTML5 Access and Improved Custom Dashboards
Mobile access and custom reporting are two additional areas that CA Technologies has
strategically invested in for CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5. The CA Nimsoft Monitor dashboard
portlet in the Unified Management Portal (UMP) has been improved for added usability,
reliability, and performance. In version 7.5, users can also access CA Nimsoft Monitor dashboards
on mobile devices. The CA Nimsoft Monitor UMP Dashboard portlet replaces the Custom
Dashboards, Dashboard Designer, and Dynamic Views portlets in previous versions.

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Improved Dynamic Thresholds
In CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5, the baseline engine probe allows users to set dynamic
thresholds for any probe that has alarm thresholds. CA Technologies has also improved the
overall performance and stability of hub-to-hub tunnels. Additionally, the CA Nimsoft Monitor
RESTful Web Services API has been enhanced, through improvements including:
 Added REST API for Maintenance Mode
 Added call to REST API QoS data retrieval, to retrieve QoS Constraint IDs for an SLO
 Added REST API for enriched origins
Enhanced Discovery Capabilities
In CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5, the discovery process has been improved to include:
 Improved SNMP characterization
 Improved LUA functionality for Discovery Server
 Improved NDP discovery for Discovery Agent
 Configurable SNMP port
CA Nimsoft Monitor V7.5 Configuration and Installation Process
The installation process for CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5 is fundamentally different from those
of the other IT monitoring products offered by IBM, Nagios, and SolarWinds. CA Technologies has
made sure that everything – from the product download to the installation process – is seamless
and easy to complete. CA Technologies uses Flexera Software’s InstallAnywhere platform for CA
Nimsoft Monitor installation, which makes installation and execution quick and uncomplicated.
The only prerequisite is that the host server must be running Java in order for the installation to
be completed.
During the installation process, CA Nimsoft Monitor displays on-screen hints to prepare the IT
administrator for the subsequent configuration and device discovery phases. Both Nagios and
SolarWinds utilize a flat transfer of a ZIP file, which requires separate execution and manual file
extraction. While no download or installation errors occurred with any of the platforms reviewed,
the download and installation process of CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5 was by far the easiest
to use of all of the products assessed during this study.
After the initial installation, the configuration of CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5 continues to be
straightforward. Of all of the vendor platforms reviewed, CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5 was by
far the easiest and quickest to configure and begin monitoring. The out-of-the-box automated
discovery process took 15 minutes to identify and log all 100 devices. After the automated

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discovery process was completed, CA Nimsoft Monitor immediately began monitoring devices
for performance, highlighting any network latency and individual device performance issues.
The CA Nimsoft Monitor Unified
Service Manager (USM)
dashboard gives the user a
complete view of the entire IT
environment being monitored.
This includes supporting
dynamic drill-down into specific
areas of concern, right from the
USM dashboard. Within the
dashboard, users can also
identify device performance issues by geography, measure overall performance, and review the
latest alarms. The single dashboard provides a complete, unified view of an IT infrastructure, and
is easy to access throughout the product, whenever the user wants to proactively review
performance. However, if a user desires a more reactive approach, CA Nimsoft Monitor alarm
capabilities allow for specific thresholds to be established for device and network performance.
CA Nimsoft Monitor will then alert the IT administrator through an alarm or email notification
concerning any performance-related alarms. This is another area in which version 7.5 has been
enhanced in comparison with version 7.1. The dashboard portlet in USM provides improved
usability, reliability, and performance, and allows the user to view dashboards on mobile tablet
devices.
Reporting is a significant strength of CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5. The reporting process is
completely interactive, allowing the user to drag-and-drop specific devices onto the reporting
screen for immediate graphing. Reporting can be initiated by a specific device, by a group of
devices, or by quality of service. The platform’s advanced filtering capabilities enable granular
reporting down to the specific probe level. In addition, Nimsoft version 7.5 supports the ability
to import non-IT data, such as sales and revenue, to display alongside IT data.
Comparative Benchmark Results
Apprize360’s assessment discovered several differences in the installation and configuration
processes, as well as in overall operations, between the various platforms included in this study.
Overall, CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5 led the group, with regard to overall ease-of-installation,
configuration, and operations, as well as speed of download and installation. In addition, unlike
SolarWinds and Nagios, CA Nimsoft Monitor offers more than a time-limited trial. SolarWinds
only allows users 30 days of free use of its respective platforms, while Nagios provides a 60-day
trial period. By comparison, CA offers a free version of the product, called CA Nimsoft Monitor
CA Nimsoft Monitor Version 7.5 Unified Dashboard

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Snap, which allows users to monitor up to 30 devices for as long as they want. For more info and
to download, visit: www.ca.com/snap.
The full quantitative results of this study can be found in Appendix A of this document, beginning
on page 20.
CA Nimsoft Monitor vs. SolarWinds
All four of the assessed SolarWinds products use the same download and installation method.
SolarWinds requires users to download a ZIP file containing an auto-extractable application that
must then be manually activated. Unlike CA Nimsoft Monitor, SolarWinds offers no guided
installation wizard to help the user through the installation process. In addition, the SolarWinds
products involve several different steps that are needed to complete the installation. It took 61
minutes to download, install, configure, and discover 100 devices with CA Nimsoft Monitor.
However, more than double that time was required to complete the same installation process
with the four SolarWinds products. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager and SolarWinds NPM both
took the longest to deploy, requiring roughly two hours before active monitoring could begin.
Table 1: CA Nimsoft Monitor 7.5 vs. SolarWinds
CA Nimsoft
Monitor 7.5
SolarWinds
NPM
SolarWinds
Storage Mgr
SolarWinds
Virtualization
Mgr
SolarWinds
SAM
Download 15 mins 11 mins 8 mins 15 mins 10 mins
Installation 15 mins 52 mins 44 mins 73 mins 60 mins
Configuration 16 mins 25 mins 38 mins 44 mins 33 mins
Discovery 15 mins 25 mins 35 mins 32 mins 35 mins
Total Time to
Monitor
61 minutes 113 minutes 125 minutes 164 minutes 138 minutes
After the relevant files are downloaded and the installation process is completed, the
configuration of the various SolarWinds products varies slightly, due to their individual purposes.
One issue that was quickly apparent in this study is that SolarWinds requires four separate
products to meet the functionality found in the single instance of CA Nimsoft Monitor. Rather
than having to load, navigate, and analyze data from four separate products – none of which are
integrated together for dashboard analysis or reporting purposes in the trial versions – CA
Nimsoft Monitor offers a single, unified architecture and dashboard. It is this type of easy-to-use
navigation that gives CA Nimsoft Monitor a marked advantage over SolarWinds.
CA Nimsoft Monitor vs. Nagios XI
Nagios XI is an open-source IT monitoring product that runs on Linux servers. In a similar
approach to SolarWinds, Nagios offers a free 60-day trial period with a fully functional license for
Nagios XI. After 60 days, the user must decide whether to pay a licensing fee to keep Nagios XI
functional. Nagios XI is licensed on a per-monitoring-server basis. License pricing is determined

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by the number of hosts (nodes) that the user intends to monitor. There are no restrictions on the
number of services that can be monitored with XI.
While Nagios XI is a relatively inexpensive solution, an experienced IT administrator may be
needed for its successful deployment and management. Downloading Nagios XI is a multi-step
process that lacks the guided process offered by CA Nimsoft Monitor. After installation, the
configuration process is highly technical, requiring the manual development of discovery queries
and manual alert generation without on-screen guidance. It took almost three and half hours
(197 minutes) to download, install, configure, and discover 100 devices with Nagios XI, while the
same routine took 61 minutes in total for CA Nimsoft Monitor 7.5.
Table 2: CA Nimsoft Monitor 7.5 vs. Nagios XI
CA Nimsoft Monitor
Version 7.5
Nagios XI
Download 15 min 16 min
Installation 15 min 22 min
Configuration 16 min 118 min
Discovery 15 min 41 min
Total Time to
Monitor
61 minutes 197 minutes
CA Nimsoft Monitor vs. IBM SmartCloud Monitoring
IBM SmartCloud Monitoring is available in a 30-day trial version that users can review and test.
IBM SmartCloud includes IBM Tivoli Monitoring and the following IBM Tivoli Monitoring for
Virtual Environments components:
 Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machines agent
 NetApp Storage agent, Network Devices agent, and VMware VI agent
 Virtual Environments Dashboard
 Virtual Environments Performance and Capacity Management Reports
 Capacity Planner for Virtual Environments.
The download of SmartCloud Monitoring is completed by downloading two separate files, both
of which first require the download and use of IBM’s Java-based IBM Download Director. The
first of these two files is the SmartCloud platform, and the second is the infrastructure node
application. If users do not already have IBM Download Director installed, this requires a separate
download of the file management platform.
Like the download processes for SolarWinds and Nagios, the download of IBM SmartCloud
Monitoring is a highly manual, unguided, and unsupported process. The download and
installation of IBM SmartCloud was completed in 35 minutes in this study, while the entire

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configuration process took two hours to complete. The total time from download to discovery
and monitoring of 100 devices was three hours (180 minutes).
Table 3: CA Nimsoft Monitor 7.5 vs. IBM SmartCloud Monitoring
CA Nimsoft Monitor
Version 7.5
IBM SmartCloud
Monitoring
Download 15 min 15 min
Installation 15 min 20 min
Configuration 16 min 120 min
Discovery 15 min 25 min
Total Time to Monitor 61 minutes 180 minutes
Remote Monitoring Considerations for Distributed Environments
The ability to monitor remote networks is a growing need among MSPs and enterprises that need
to observe remote networks over the public Internet. MSPs typically offer “remote monitoring”
services for their clients, which require the ability to monitor the availability and performance of
the infrastructures within their customers’ internal firewalls. Many corporations also need to
monitor remote branch offices that are not connected to their corporate backbones.
While all of the solutions evaluated in this report are able to monitor IT elements within a local
environment, the ability to monitor remote customer networks under a single monitoring
domain varies among vendors. In order to achieve remote monitoring visibility, any solution will
require network connectivity to communicate with client devices and systems. Additionally,
monitoring tools are needed to understand Network Address Translator (NAT) and duplicate
private IP addresses from customer to customer. Finally, customer firewalls need to be
considered, as many companies want their data to be transmitted securely and with a small
footprint (i.e., minimal to zero firewall ports opened). As part of this report, the vendor products
included in this analysis were assessed in order to understand their remote monitoring
capabilities and ability to best address the needs of MSPs and large enterprises.
CA Nimsoft Monitor
 CA Nimsoft Monitor includes deep
remote monitoring capabilities, which
were developed in the earliest
versions of the product. Customers
that need to monitor remote
locations, offices, and networks can
do so by installing a software-based
“hub” inside the client network.
CA Nimsoft Monitor Multi-Site Deployment

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 The CA Nimsoft Monitor hub then securely communicates monitoring information from the
remote site to the primary Nimsoft server, over a single port using an SSL tunnel. No third-
party VPN technology is required, and CA Technologies does not impose any extra charge for
this connectivity capability.
 Nimsoft portal access can also be granted to each client, so that customers only have access
to monitoring data from their local hubs, which enables MSPs to supply live content to their
clients under a single Nimsoft deployment. CA Nimsoft Monitor delivers multi-tenancy
support to MSPs that leverage these capabilities.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
There are four options for enabling remote monitoring with SolarWinds NPM. These include:
 Option 1: Centralized deployment – This involves the centralized deployment of NPM, and
then the utilization of VPN connections to each remote network. If no VPN connection exists,
NPM must be deployed at each site, with access made possible via a web console. This option
can be costly and can increase monitoring complexity for MSPs and large enterprises, which
have to use multiple VPNs for this arrangement.
 Option 2: Distributed deployment – This option allows for the deployment of NPM at each
customer site. Data from each NPM deployment is then sent to and processed by a separate
SolarWinds module, called SolarWinds Enterprise Operations Console (EOC), at the MSP’s
NOC. This option is very complex for MSPs, and requires a standalone SolarWinds NPM
deployment for each customer. Additionally, the SolarWinds Enterprise Operations Console,
which is the software required to combine all of the remote installations into a single MSP
NOC view, starts at a price of US$4,995 per deployment.
 Option 3: Hybrid approach – This option is used when the customer has implemented more
than one SolarWinds product with one product in a centralized model and the others in a
distributed model. Similar to option 2 above, SolarWinds EOC is used to connect all the
platforms together for data collection and analysis. MSPs considering this option may be
concerned over the lack of standardization across their customer base, and the need for an
individual strategy for each client.
 Option 4: N-able – SolarWinds also recommends that customers with a highly distributed
architecture consider their new N-able product to avoid remote monitoring challenges. N-
able is a remote monitoring company that SolarWinds acquired.
CA Nimsoft Monitor has the advantage in this case, as a dedicated VPN connection is not required
for each case of communication to each remote site.

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Nagios XI
Like SolarWinds, Nagios suggests a full-time VPN connection to remote locations as its preferred
option. The company also offers a “distributed monitoring” configuration option. However,
employing this option can become very complicated, as it requires an additional module called
the Multi-Nagios Tactical Overview System (MNTOS) monitoring aggregation tool. MNTOS allows
the Nagios XI user to setup an aggregated view of multiple Nagios monitoring servers, making it
the preferred tool for distributed monitoring environments (similar to the Enterprise Operations
Consoles’ role for SolarWinds).
It is suggested that users fully research their remote monitoring options with Nagios, in order to
understand the cost and effort required to monitor remote customer networks with the
platform. While Nagios’ open source offering is free of software licensing costs, those savings can
be quickly burned as a result of the human hours required to get the environment up and running
– and to keep it up.
IBM SmartCloud Monitoring
The distributed monitoring capabilities within the IBM SmartCloud platform were the hardest to
determine during our testing. Because information on this metric was not readily available, a
detailed analysis could not be completed.
Summary of Testing Scenarios
In addition to benchmark tests of the vendor platforms, Apprize360 created specific testing
scenarios that were applied to each vendor’s products. The full scenario testing results can be
found in Table 7, which begins on page 24 of this report. The following is a summary analysis of
the test results, which highlights the most impressive scenario responses and capabilities
assessed for each vendor’s product.
Configuration
CA Nimsoft Monitor Version 7.5
One of the advantages of CA Nimsoft Monitor is the “agent-optional” approach. This allows the
user to access to both an agent-based or an agentless monitoring configuration, based upon their
specific needs and their environment. CA Nimsoft Monitor’s agent-less monitoring option
collects information from “black box” systems, such as hypervisors, SAN storage systems,
network devices, SaaS, and cloud environments where no agents are permitted. CA Nimsoft
Monitor’s agent-based monitoring provides spooling of performance metrics in disconnected
environments so no data is ever lost in outages.

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CA Nimsoft Monitor uses what it calls a “robot” (analogous to an agent) to collect and
disseminate information about a managed device. Customers that want to leverage on-board
monitoring configurations install a lightweight robot on each managed device. These robots
provide the communication functionality required for a system to be monitored in a CA Nimsoft
Monitor domain. CA Nimsoft Monitor offers the “Automated Deployment Engine” (ADE) that
enables administrators to quickly and centrally distribute agents to remote target servers,
removing the need to manually install the robot binary onto each system directly.
CA Nimsoft Monitor then leverages one or more “probes” to monitor specific
components/technologies on a managed device. For example, one common probe, the CDM
probe, is responsible for monitoring CPU, disk and memory utilization on target hosts. Over140
probes are available, allowing users to manage the entire IT infrastructure, including servers,
storage, network devices, applications and databases as well as user response time monitoring
and data center power consumption. Probes can be easily deployed across an entire network via
a simple drag-and-drop interface—or programmatically in an automated fashion.
SolarWinds
SolarWinds NPM can monitor the performance of SNMPv1, SNMPv2, or SNMPv3-enabled devices
within a network. SolarWinds NPM uses either Network Sonar discovery and import or Node
Management in the NPM Web Console to discover objects for monitoring. To discover and add
a larger number of devices across a network, the Network Sonar and Network Sonar Results
Wizards are available. The web console provides Web Node Management to add individual
objects for monitoring.
After Network Sonar Discovery has populated the SolarWinds Database with the network objects
to be included in monitoring, node and volume information is passed to the Business Layer. The
Business Layer passes node and volume information to the Collector Polling Controller and
provides licensing information to the SolarWinds Information Service (SWIS). At this point, the
SolarWinds Collector Polling Controller creates the required polling jobs and then passes them
on to the Job Engine. The Job Engine performs the requested polling jobs and then passes the
results to the Collector Polling Controller. There, all polling results are placed into the Microsoft
Message Queue (MSMQ). Here, the Collector Data Prosssor pulls polling results from the MSMQ
and performs calculations and then inserts these results into the SolarWinds database.
Nagios XI
The Nagios XI Monitoring Wizard is used to configure and monitor a new device. After the device
is discovered, a separate wizard is run to configure monitored elements. Each device category
requires a separate wizard (see diagram). In addition, Nagios XI requires multiple tabs and open
windows to complete a task that other products can complete in a single screen. This makes
device configuration potentially time consuming and complicated to conduct.

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IBM SmartCloud Monitoring is an agent-based platform that requires agents to be installed on
various devices and sub-components. IBM SmartCloud Monitoring includes agents for various
devices and systems except for storage systems. Storage agents must be acquired separately.
Overall, configuring and deploying IBM agents is a complex and multi-step process.
With IBM SmartCloud Monitoring, there are two types of agent deployments supported:
 OS agent deployment from the installation image or using IBM command called “tacmd
createNode”. The tacmd createNode command also creates a node, the directory into
which not only the OS agent is installed, but also where any non-OS agents are deployed.
 Non-OS agent (such as the DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows agent) deployment using
the Tivoli Enterprise Portal GUI (for other non-OS agents) or the “tacmd addSystem”
command.
We discovered that remote deployment of agents is the easiest method for agent configuration
and installation. Remote deployment provides the ability to deploy agents across the
environment from a central location. At this central location, a repository is created to store the
agent images called the “agent depot”. The agent depot is then populated with the desired
installation images and then is verified. Once the depot has been verified to contain all the
desired images, they are distributed out in the network. All agents that will be deployed in the
network require their application support files that contain the agent-specific information, which
must be installed in the Enterprise host server.
Out-of-The-Box Dashboards
CA Nimsoft Monitor provides intuitive,
up-to-date portal views of monitoring
data.
The solution features a monitoring
portal that provides a complete view of
the systems and services that underpin
vital business services, whether those
are based on any combination of virtualized infrastructures, SaaS offerings, cloud-based services,
or outsourced environments. In addition, the solution offers multi-tenant capabilities that enable
services providers, or enterprises, to monitor and manage the infrastructures of multiple clients
or users.
Configurable dashboards offer end-users and service providers real-time, immediate access to
the monitoring data that matters to them. CA Nimsoft Monitor reports provide snapshots and

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historical context for quality of service, performance and SLA compliance monitoring. In addition
dashboards can be tailored to specific users, groups and roles, enabling users to see any type of
data that matters to them in a single view. For service providers, dashboards can be branded and
customized for each end user. CA Nimsoft Monitor also supports out-of-the-box dashboards for
VMware health and performance, power consumption, Amazon Web Services, and data center
performance.
SolarWinds
SolarWinds NPM users can select out-of-the-box dashboards or can build their own custom
dashboards via drag-and-drop placement charts and reports. Dashboards are also dynamic,
allowing for the user to click and drill-down into additional data.
One area where we discovered some complexity is when integrating specific data into NPM
dashboards. For example, a NPM user is still required to log into the server and use the old
Windows application when configuring alerting.
Nagios XI
Reporting is area in which Nagios XI is inferior when compared to CA Nimsoft Monitor. Nagios
requires the use of a report writer to generate reports on specific devices, alerts, and
performance analysis. The Nagios XI report writer involves a multiple-screen, multi-step process
that takes time to set up and to use to generate reports. In addition, Nagios XI reports are heavily
focused on node availability. Users can run a “report summary” of specific host availability as well
as nine pre-canned available reports, including a summary, event log, notification log, and
bandwidth usage report.
Dashboards are another area in which CA Nimsoft Monitor has a comparative advantage over
Nagios XI. While the main Nagios XI dashboard provides information on overall performance
state, as well as alerts on performance issues, Nagios has no single, unified dashboard for
understanding IT health on one screen. Instead, Nagios utilizes multiple dashboards on multiple
separate webpages, which are categorized by the specific host or service group.
IBM SmartCloud Monitoring has a central dashboard called a “health dashboard”. The dashboard
is automatically sorted by severity of issue. In addition, users can click directly into specific tools
as well as drill down into the actual physical component. For example, an IT administrator may
be alerted to a storage problem on the dashboard and has the ability to drill down into the IBM
Tivoli monitoring tools for storage management and begin to address the issue from there. The
other positive aspect of this tool is that by placing your cursor over a highlighted topic or device
creates a pop-up in the window, giving the user immediate information about that device.

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Service Level Agreement (SLA) Reporting
CA Nimsoft Monitor includes a robust SLA tracking and reporting module that monitors
operations and business service levels against SLA targets and forecasts violations with warning
alerts. This part of the Nimsoft solution provides a graphical interface for defining SLA
parameters, which can include the compliance period and operating periods, exclusion windows,
the SLA target compliance percentage and more. Web-based SLA compliance reports with drill-
down granularity are auto-generated and auto-distributed.
The CA Nimsoft Monitor SLA reporting and monitoring solution will also continuously perform
calculations to determine if the current period SLA is safely in compliance. It will determine if a
SLA breach is imminent should the problem or condition be allowed to persist. CA Nimsoft SLA
reports include color-coded SLA compliance/breach trend indicators with forecasted breach date
and time. Warning and critical level alerts can be generated when the percentage compliance
decreases to predefined thresholds.
It is important to note that any metric can be tracked for SLA reporting within CA Nimsoft
Monitor, including non-IT metrics that may be important to your organization. As an example, if
the number of users logged into an e-commerce site or average sales price per transaction
metrics were held in an external database, CA Nimsoft Monitor could collect such metrics and
analyze them for SLA purposes. This module can help eliminate time consuming manual
reporting.
SolarWinds
SolarWinds’ IP SLA Manager is a free add-on module to SolarWinds NPM that is designed to
identify site-specific or WAN-related network performance issues. SolarWinds IP SLA Manager
can help locate which devices on a network actually support IP SLA and automatically setup
operations for those devices. SolarWinds IP SLA also allows users to monitor WAN applications
by taking the performance-pulse of underlying network protocols, including DNS lookups, FTP,
HTTP, TCP connect, and UDP jitter, while continuing to monitor VoIP call paths.
Note that SolarWinds does not appear to offer a “global” SLA monitoring or reporting application
that allows customers to mix and match cross-domain key performance indicators.
Nagios XI
Nagios XI does not have SLA support out-of-the-box, making this a difficult solution to support
MSPs as well as internal IT organizations that have SLAs with internal business units or external
service providers.

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IBM SmartCloud Monitoring lacks integrated SLA reporting. SLA reporting with IBM SmartCloud
Monitoring is accomplished through licensing add-on IBM products. Customers can add SLA
monitoring to their deployment through using the IBM Tivoli Service Level Advisor or by
deploying IBM Maximo. IBM Tivoli Service Level Advisor is a wizard-based platform that allows
users to set, monitor, and report on IT services that are not meeting defined service levels. IBM
Maximo SLA Manager helps to define SLA agreements for monitoring as well as create rules for
escalation procedures when SLA bounds are breeched. This add-on module supports a real-time
graphical UI to display key performance indicators and SLA performance.
Overall ease of use – Unified Views, Workflows, Alarms, Device Views, & Reporting
CA Nimsoft Monitor alarm management helps IT operations personnel manage the flood of
events that come in from the IT infrastructure by eliminating duplicate event signals and filtering
events according to operational or business priorities. The goals are to improve the mean time
to isolate and repair problems and to prioritize IT support efforts according to business process
value. Through the solution’s custom filters, customers can set alerts only when an exception
occurs, such as an outage, failure, or threshold breach. CA Nimsoft Monitor alarm management
helps IT organizations reduce the time it takes to troubleshoot problems by consolidating events
from various devices, servers and applications and providing the ability to assign alarms to the
right IT staff.
CA Nimsoft Monitor features a monitoring portal that offers a single role-based, intuitive view of
all monitoring data. This portal extends the multi-tenant capabilities of CA Nimsoft Monitor,
enabling service providers to effectively report service level agreement (SLA) status and
monitoring information to clients, while offering clear, executive-ready dashboards to display SLA
status for in-house stake holders. Out-of-the-box portlets and end user level customization allow
CA Nimsoft Monitor users to adjust and optimize their monitoring views.
SolarWinds
SolarWinds NPM reporting is generated through the “Report Writer” feature embedded within
the web console. Report Writer also allows customers to create custom network monitoring
reports using SQL. A variety of predefined reports are also included in the NPM deployment.
One area of deficiency is the area of ad hoc report generation. While there are a number of pre-
defined reports, generating an ad hoc report on specific devices or groups took time and several
different steps to generate. Reporting is also limited to non-graphical based tables.

17 | P a g e
Nagios XI
Reporting is area in which Nagios XI is inferior when compared to CA Nimsoft Monitor. Nagios
requires the use of a report writer to generate reports on specific devices, alerts, and
performance analysis. The Nagios XI report writer involves a multiple-screen, multi-step process
that takes time to set up and to use to generate reports. In addition, Nagios XI reports are heavily
focused on node availability. Users can run a “report summary” of specific host availability as well
as nine pre-canned available reports, including a summary, event log, notification log, and
bandwidth usage report.
Integrated analytics is area of strength for IBM SmartCloud Monitoring. IBM SmartCloud
Monitoring supports a dynamic, graphics-based UI, which includes integrated capacity planning
and optimization of cloud and virtual environments. Capacity planning is an area of strength for
this platform. IBM SmartCloud Monitoring includes “what-if” analysis that enables IT
administrators to model potential capacity scenarios to make informed decisions on future
expansion. For example, whether it is possible to consolidate from three virtual hosts to two, or
how many older hosts would be required to run desired workloads, versus upgrading to new
ones. Users can model these scenarios to determine the most efficient, cost-effective IT strategy.

18 | P a g e
Summary and Conclusions
CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5 is an easy-to-use and quick-to-deploy IT monitoring solution. Of
the eight solutions assessed, CA Monitor version 7.5’s installation and configuration process
made it the easiest and quickest way to begin monitoring IT assets.
There are several factors that make CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5 unique:
1) Monitoring functionality is hosted in a single, unified platform. It takes four SolarWinds
products to provide the functionality offered by a single instance of CA Nimsoft Monitor.
2) CA Nimsoft Monitor supports a guided installation and configuration process. This offers
a deployment process that is quick and intuitive, allowing for the correct decisions to be
made during initial configuration.
3) CA Nimsoft Monitor had the fastest “time to monitor” (time from download, through
configuration, and to reporting on device monitoring), at 61 minutes. The closest
alternative was SolarWinds NPM at 113 minutes, which is almost twice as long as the time
for CA Nimsoft Monitor and is limited to only network monitoring (see Table 4 and Figure
1 below).
4) CA Nimsoft Monitor’s drag-and-drop reporting made deep device reporting simple and
fast.
5) Of the eight products analyzed, CA Nimsoft Monitor’s discovery process was the fastest
in identifying devices and beginning active device monitoring.
6) CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5 supports easier remote monitoring for MSPs and large
enterprise environments through a single, unified platform.
7) CA Nimsoft Monitor version 7.5 was the most responsive, and was capable of addressing
most of the testing scenarios without any additional add-on modules.
0
50
100
150
200
250
CA Nimsoft SW NPM SW
Storage
SW VM SW SAM Nagios XI IBM SCM
Download Install Configure Discovery
Minutes
Figure 1: Total Time to Monitor

19 | P a g e
Table 4: Comparative Summary - Total Time to Monitor
CA Nimsoft
Monitor
v7.5
SolarWinds
NPM
SolarWinds
Storage Mgr
SolarWinds
Virtualization
Mgr
SolarWinds
SAM
Nagios XI
IBM
SmartCloud
Monitoring
Download 15 min 11 min 8 min 15 min 10 min 16 min 15 min
Installation 15 min 52 min 44 min 73 min 60 min 22 min 20 min
Configurati
on
16 min 25 min 38 min 44 min 33 min 118 min 120 min
Discovery 15 min 25 min 35 min 32 min 35 min 41 min 25 min
Total Time
to Monitor
61 minutes 113 minutes 125 minutes 164 minutes 138 minutes 197 minutes 180 minutes

TABLE 5: CA Nimsoft Monitor (v 7.1 & 7.5) vs. Solarwinds
Topics Description
CA NIMSOFT Monitor
Version 7.1
CA NIMSOFT Monitor
Version 7.5
Solarwinds NPM
Solarwinds Virtualization
Manager
Solarwinds SAM
Solarwinds Storage
Manager
SCORE NOTES SCORE NOTES SCORE NOTES SCORE NOTES SCORE NOTES SCORE NOTES
Installation
Total
Download
5 25 min 5 15 min 4 11 min 4 15 min 4 10 min 4 8 min
Total
Installation
5 19 min 5 15 min 4 52 min 3 73 min 4 60 min 4 44 min
Download
Size
4 1.2 GB 4 1.1 GB 4 5.4 GB 4
1.42 GB VMware/
1.4 GB Hyper-V
5 640 MB 5
315 mb
windows/408
mb Linux
Installation
Difficulty
5
EASY; Wizard-
based
5
EASY; Wizard-
based
3 Multiple Steps 3 Multiple Steps 3 Multiple Steps 4
Multiple Steps
but straight
forward
Installation
errors
5 Zero 5 Zero 5 Zero 5 Zero 5 Zero 5 Zero
Configuration
Total Time to
Configure
5 18 min 5 16 min 4 25 Minutes 4 44 Min 4 33 Min 4 38 Min
Ease of
configuration
5
EASY; Wizard-
based
5
EASY; Wizard-
based
4
"Intelligent"
alert
configuration
3
Highly Manual,
time consuming
4
Manual, time
consuming
4
Manual, time
consuming
Platform Ease
of Use
Overall Ease
of Use of
Platform
5 EASY 5 EASY 4
MEDIUM; Prior
experience with
IT mgt needed
4
Multiple screens
with dashboards
4
MEDIUM; Prior
IT mgt
experience
4
MEDIUM; Prior
experience with
IT mgt needed
UI &
Navigation
5
Dynamic drill-
down
5
Dynamic drill-
down
4
Drop-down
menus
4
Drop-Down
menus
4
Drop down
menus
4
Drop-down
menus
Ease of
Performance
Reporting
5 EASY 5 EASY 4 MEDIUM 4
Data is there,
overwhelming &
difficult to scale
back
4 MEDIUM 4 MEDIUM
Visualize
component
performance
5 HIGH VISIBILITY 5 HIGH VISIBILITY 5 HIGH VISIBILITY 4
Can force view
into graphic
format
5 HIGH VISIBILITY 5 HIGH VISBILITY
Performance
Overall app
performance
5
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
5
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
5
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
5
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
5
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
5
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
Discovery of
100 network
components
5 19 MIN 5 15 MIN 4 25 min 4 32 min 3
35 min;
Requires
separate
module
4 35 min
Overall
dashboard
performance
5
HIGHEST
PERFORMANCE
5
HIGHEST
PERFORMANCE
4
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
4
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
4
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
4
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
Diagnosis and
Resolution
Performance
issue
identification
5 IMMEDIATE 5 IMMEDIATE 4 Slight Delay 4
Took 5 min before
data storage
capacity was
alerted
4 IMMEDIATE 4 IMMEDIATE

21 | P a g e
Problem
Discovery
Workflow
5 STRONG 5 STRONG 2
PARTIAL in
COMPARISON
5
Provides
recommendations
to remediate alert
2
PARTIAL in
COMPARISON
2
PARTIAL in
COMPARISON
Level of
Unification
Level of
Integration
5 Unified platform 5 Unified platform 1
4 separate
platforms
1
4 separate
platforms 1
4 separate
platforms
1
4 separate
platforms
Reporting
OOTB vs.
Customization
3
Capability of
Configuration
4
Deep
configuration
capability
4
Requires
custom report
writer
4
Requires custom
report writer 4
Requires
custom report
writer
4
Customer
report writer
Quantity of
Reports
5
HIGH NUMBER
OF REPORTS
5
HIGH NUMBER
OF REPORTS
4
Several pre-
canned reports
4
Canned reports
available; lots of
data
4
Several pre-
canned reports
3 Tabular reports
Dashboards 5
SINGLE
DASHBOARD
5
SINGLE
DASHBOARD
5
OTTB
Dashboards
4
Includes
Benchmarks; Too
much data on one
screen
5
OTTB
Dashboards
3
Static
dashboards
Custom
Report
Capability
1
Limited
Customization
4
Deep
Customization
5
Custom report
writer
5
Custom report
writer
5
Custom report
writer
5
Custom report
writer
Mobile
Optimized
Reporting
1
Limited
Optimization
5 Highly Optimized 2
Limited
Optimization
2
Limited
Optimization
2
Limited
Optimization
2
Limited
Optimization
Overall Self-
Guided
Support
Guided
Supported
during install
& configure
5
STRONG
Wizards
5 STRONG Wizards 3
Limited
guidance
3 Limited guidance 3
Limited
guidance
3
Limited
guidance
Support
Community
Support
Community
3
Growing
community
4
Growing
community
5
Large &
extremely
active 'Thwack'
support
community
5
Large & extremely
active 'Thwack'
support
community
5
Large &
extremely
active 'Thwack'
support
community
5
Large &
extremely
active 'Thwack'
support
community
Overall Score Out of 120 pts 107 116 93 92 93 92
Percentage
Grade
89% 97% 78% 77% 78% 77%

22 | P a g e
TABLE 6: CA Nimsoft Monitor 7.5 vs. Nagios XI and IBM SmartCloud Monitoring
Topics Description CA NIMSOFT Monitor Version 7.5 Nagios XI IBM SmartCloud Monitoring
SCORE NOTES SCORE NOTES SCORE NOTES
Installation
Total Download time 5 15 min 5 16 min 5 15 Min
Total Installation
Time
5 15 min 5 22 Min 5 20 min
Download Size 4 1.1 GB 5 255 MB MSFT VM 4 776 mb (2 files)
Level of Installation
Difficulty
5 EASY; Wizard-based 3 Multiple Steps 3
Multiple steps; requires IBM
Download Director
Total number of
installation errors
5 Zero 5 Zero 5 Zero
Configuration
Total Time to
Configure
5 16 min 2 118 Min 2 120 min
Ease of configuration 5 EASY; Wizard-based 3
Requires manual query
development; manual alert
generation without guidance
3
Requires manual alert generation
without guidance
Platform Ease of
Use
Overall Ease of Use of
Platform
5 EASY 4 Fairly easy to use 4
MEDIUM; Prior experience with IT
mgt needed
UI & Navigation 5 Dynamic drill-down 3
Drop-down menus with limited
dynamic drill-down
3 Drop-down menus
Ease of reporting
performance of
components
5 EASY 3
Requires a report writer, multiple
steps, slow report generation
3
Requires a separate report
generation writer
Ability to visualize
performance of
components
5 HIGH VISABILITY 3
LIMITED VISIBILITY of all
Components
3
Limited visibility; requires multiple
screens
Performance
Overall app
performance
5 HIGH PERFORMANCE 4 RESPONSIVE 4 RESPONSIVE
Discovery of 100
network & system
components
5 15 MIN 4 41 min 4 25 min
Overall dashboard
performance
5 HIGH PERFORMANCE 4
Limited dashboard but
responsive
4 Multiple dashboards
Diagnosis and
resolution
Performance issue
identification
5 IMMEDIATE 2
Slow to identify; Example took 10
min for alerting
2
Slow to identify; Example took 15
min before alert generation
Guided workflow for
problem discovery
5 STRONG 2 LIMITED 2 Limited guided workflow

23 | P a g e
Level of
Unification
Level of Integration 5 Unified platform 2
Requires additional modules
(Fusion, XI, & Core)
2 Separate modules
Reporting
OOTB vs.
Customization
4 Deep Configuration 2
Uses report writing engine for all
reports; requires multiple steps
to generate a report; slow report
gen
3
Limited customization; Option for
IBM BI integration
Quantity of Reports 5 HIGH NUMBER OF REPORTS 2
Uses report writing engine for all
reports
4
Uses separate report writing
module; Several pre-canned
reports; Supports capacity
planning
Dashboards 5 SINGLE DASHBOARD 3
Limited DB to include System
beck & behavior
3
Stat dashboards; No dynamic
drilldown
Custom Report
Capability
4 Deep Customization 3 Limited custom reporting 3
Limited customization; Option for
IBM BI integration
Mobile Optimized
Reporting
5 Highly Optimized 1 Extremely limited optimization 1 Extremely limited optimization
Overall Self-
Guided Support
Guided Supported
during install &
configure
5 STRONG Wizards 3 Limited guidance 3 Limited guidance
Support
Community
Support Community 4 Growing community 5 Strong support community 0
No specific community for
SmartCloud Monitoring
Overall Score Out of 120 points 116 78 75
Percentage Score 97% 65% 63%

24 | P a g e
TABLE 7: Comparative Assessment of Response to Specific Scenarios
Specific Scenario CA Nimsoft Monitor Solarwinds NPM Nagios XI IBM SmartCloud Monitoring
Agent-installation Process
Installed via a “robot”; Bulk robot
installation via Automated
Deployment Engine (ADE)
N/A - NPM is an agentless-only
platform
NCPA agent (Nagios Cross Platform
Agent) via Nagios Monitoring
Wizard; requires manual input of IP
addresses
Requires deployment of specific
device/environment agents;
Requires “Agent Builder” module to
deploy & manage agents
Configure basic system monitoring of
CPU, disk and memory via agent
approach.
Uses robot for CDM probe; Can set
polling frequency & number of
samples for each component
N/A - NPM is an agentless platform
Part of auto-discovery process;
Displays info within “Service
Status” dashboard
Requires separate module called
“Agent Builder” to deploy &
configure OS & CPU-specific agents
Configure basic system monitoring of
CPU, disk and memory via an
agentless monitoring approach
Uses RSP probe via SSH, WMI, or
telnet protocol; Can set alerts on
various thresholds
Graphic-based “Gauge” displaying
memory load & utilization with
ability to set alert thresholds
N/A – is an Agent-Only platform N/A – is an Agent-Only platform
Configure basic "ping" monitoring
Use Net Connect probe; Integrated
Ping sweep via IP addresses
Must configure through the NPM
polling engine & set default polling
settings; Requires separate
PingSweep add-on (part of
Solarwinds “Engineer Toolset”);
uses SNMP, ICMP, & WMI polling
Part of auto-discovery wizard or can
monitoring individual device if IP
address is known
Requires “Agent Builder” module
(sits outside platform) to configure
basic monitoring; Not integrated
into platform
E-mail notification, escalation and
custom alarm management
Can generate a "business" alarm
upon receipt of other alarms.
Completed via the Nimsoft “NAS”
and the Auto-operator
Free “Alert Central” module for
central alert management; Includes
desktop alert management
Basic email notification with limited
alarm customization
Wizard-based; easy to setup with
escalation management based on
rules engine
Test a URL (via an HTTP test) and a
ping test from a managed server
Requires URL Response Probe; Can
test within Probe profile tab
Requires separate HTTP Monitor
module for URL testing
Within dashboard; Has website URL
monitoring wizard
Not able to test; Did not appear to
support URL and ping test
Review the entire library of out of the
box Unified Views/Dashboards that
ship with the solution
24 dashboard views; all highly
graphical dashboards that are
customizable – can use “portlets”
(widgets) to create custom
dashboards for specific users or
teams.
Can use “widgets” to create custom
dashboards; Comprehensive
dashboard capabilities within NPM
with 30 pre-configured dashboards
30 dashboards by specific category;
Custom “dashlets” priced
separately; Has central “service
status” dashboard
Comprehensive set of dashboards
& reports with integrated capacity
planning
Create a simple SLA report to track
several metrics. Generate an SLA
alert
Custom or pre-configured SLA
reports; Performance on
availability, frequency, response
time, and quality; Provides a
graphical interface for defining SLA
parameters
Requires additional module to be
licensed; Solarwinds IP SLA Monitor
or Solarwinds Network Quality
Manager required for SLA reporting
Limited SLA reporting support;
Basic up-time reporting only
Can set and track limited SLAs from
Health dashboard; Requires add-on
modules from IBM Service Level
Manager for more in-depth SLA
monitoring and reporting
Overall ease of use, unified views,
workflows, built in alarms, device
views in a single interface
Single unified interface with one
view of device status, alarms, and
workflow execution
Multiple tabs & apps required;
Customers may have NPM and SAM
deployed along with other
modules.
Multiple tabs and webpages
required for different views of
devices & device categories
Integrated unified interface;
Contact-sensitive interface with
dashboards

Comparative Analysis of IT Monitoring Tools

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